Spotify recently released their mid-year charts breakdown, with a surprising turnaround in their ranking of Japanese artists based on popularity overseas. While YOASOBI took the crown as the most streamed Japanese act in the West for the past four years in a row, The First Times reports that, this year, first place was taken by vocal powerhouse Ado. However, in a more interesting turn of events, second place was taken by ATLUS Sound Team, topping the 4-time consecutive winner YOASOBI who ended up in third place.
Spotify’s 2025 top 10 most streamed Japanese acts overseas (mid-year ranking):
- Ado
- Atlus Sound Team
- YOASOBI
- Joe Hisaishi
- XG
- Fujii Kaze
- Creepy Nuts
- Hiroyuki Sawano
- LiSA
- ONE OK ROCK
ATLUS Sound Team didn’t appear in any of the 2020s Spotify end-year charts until its breakthrough debut in 2024 (Source: PR Times, Natalie, Billboard Japan, TOKION). The reason for such high results in the previous year might be due to Atlus releasing Persona 3 Reload, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance and Metaphor: ReFantazio back-to-back, with all three games garnering huge success both in Japan and the West. Following the three releases, ATLUS Sound Team was kind enough to drop the games’ respective full OST albums on Spotify and other streaming platforms.
The Persona 3 Reload Original Sountrack album triumphed among the three, with the iconic battle theme It’s Going Down Now garnering over 100 million streams at the time of writing – which is more than double the number of streams compared to last year’s 42 million (source: Atlus). While the popularity of Atlus Sound Team only seems to be rising among overseas listeners, it is important to note that this is only the mid-year breakdown of Spotify’s charts, which means that there is a possibility that the final rankings will change by the end of the year. However, this still marks a great achievement for Atlus Sound Team, who are the only video game music act ranking among the top 10 most streamed J-pop acts overseas.
On a related note, Atlus recently established an official YouTube channel focusing on the music from their games, and has posted several special soundtrack mixes of some of their biggest titles, including Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5, with possibly more to come in the future.
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